There can be no doubt that the old ways are fading. You can be long dead and a computerized robot can help resurrect your band for a hit single. You can play the ponies from the comfort of an internet-connected toilet. Asymmetric pant designs, widely lampooned in years past, are well-regarded and fetch premium prices.
Whether a pensive toe in murky waters, a peacockish provocation or just people getting bored, one of the last and longest-standing barriers is now being prodded and pushed against. The nollie smith grind, long a recurring villain in the ‘most illegal trick’ segment of the Bunt’s ‘Rapid Fire Q&A’, has surfaced roughly 2.5 times in recent months, readily qualifying it as a trend for the purposes of clumsily thought-out and overwritten ‘blogging’ online websites. In quick succession during August’s heatsome middle, the nollie backside smith grind delivered a quick one-two punch that left 1990s-schooled dogmatists casting about for their NOS pearls — first it was Tom Karangelov, he of the hidden spots and the discerning eye, blopping his back truck heelwise up onto a step after an otherwise standard bump-to-bar ollie. Days later on the opposite coast, Dick Rizzo, resplendent in yellow Half-Cabs, popped one onto the best-loved square rail in all of Northern Carolina — with two angles, even.
Things settled down for a little while after that. Then last month the April Skateboarding Team, making various choices regarding their Nike shoe promo video, featured a clip of the hard-skating Dashawn Jordan doing a fakie version of the same trick on an even more realer-deal handrail, with aplomb. An easy barometer for how weakened the old pillars have become: The Slap boards’ fulminating centered mainly on the trick’s proper name, with members hurling about Bennett/willy/smith variations, versus whether the trick should have been done at all.
And what of it? The calendar indicates the dwindling days of 2023, Year of the Pangolin. The mongo switch push has gone from celebrated affectation to ‘ho-hum.’ You can be a name pro and film a part rife with ABDs. We are good with fakie frontside shove-its, fam. WKND challenged the notion of positioning rollerbladers as mortal enemies — and so far has lived to tell the tale.
Could 2024 bring benihana enders and mall grab throw-downs? Will Matt Mumford’s ‘Misled Youth’ part-closing nollie frontside smith grind, on a legit handrail and handsomely dipped, at last receive its just due? Does such ongoing boundary-testing portend yet more outlandish and possibly grotesque realms ahead, like, say, a nollie frontside willy grind body varial out?
Tags: April, Blades of Steel, Bronze 56k, Carolina Love, Dashawn Jordan, Dick Rizzo, error message, final frontiers, horseplayers, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, nollie smith grinds, one truck down, San Dieguito, smart toilets, the Beatles, Tom Karangelov, WKND
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